Behind the Scenes with Moms Don’t Have Time To Read Books
Podcast host Zibby Owens discusses Covid grief and relief, time-management, and new projects in this exclusive interview
Have you ever wondered how Zibby Owens finds the time to conduct interviews, edit and publish anthologies, appear on television, host book clubs, and write books while also being a mother to four kids?
Writer Caroline Callahan Janson recently sat down with the podcast and publishing maven to discuss the therapeutic powers of sharing on Instagram, what lies ahead for her literary brand, and how she manages to get it all done (hint: keep unread emails to under one hundred).
Zibby Owens: Hi. It’s so nice to see you again.
Caroline Callahan Janson: It’s so good to see you. I listen to your podcast every day, and read Moms Don’t Have Time To Write, and have been to a few book clubs. And all the while I’m thinking — here Zibby is interviewing all these incredible authors, but somebody should be interviewing Zibby.
ZO: Oh, my gosh, you’re so funny. I’ve actually been trying to think about it since you brought it up and analyze how I get a lot of stuff done.
CCJ: But seriously! Let’s go through this: You’ve been called the “Oprah of books,” by Jamie Brenner, and gone from one episode a week to seven episodes a week — plus editing an anthology in a short amount of time, plus launching a magazine, plus writing your own books, plus parenting your four kids (between ages 6 and 13, no less) plus starting the Susan Felice Program for Covid Research in honor of your mother-in-law, plus being on the NYPL Advisory Council and Child Mind Institute and other boards.
How do you do all of this? What’s your day like? How do you manage your schedule?
ZO: I actually posted on Instagram this morning as I was in midst of chaos. I was sitting on the floor replacing the toner, thinking: this is just par for the course, with everyone barking at me — my older child saying, “I’m going to fail if you don’t do this right now.” My little guy is like, “Is it a school day?” “Can I have my milk?” Then, of course, I microwave the milk, and forget it in the microwave. Twenty minutes later he’s like, “What happened to my milk?” It was just one thing after another.
CCJ: What time do you get up? 4:30 a.m.?
ZO: I honestly get up with my kids. I don’t wake up before them. Usually, someone’s up by 5:30, no later than 6. My kids don’t sleep. Or my little guys don’t sleep. And my older son won’t wake up and doesn’t go to bed. Literally, last night at two in the morning my seven-year-old daughter was having an hour-long tantrum, which she doesn’t usually do.
In the middle of the night, she thought it was the morning, started getting dressed for school, realized I forgot her favorite leggings in the Hamptons this weekend. She was in the dryer, in my son’s room, everywhere. How could I forget her leggings? She wasn’t going to go to school.
It took an hour for her to calm down. So she finally goes to sleep wearing half her uniform. I hear a door slam upstairs. I was like, oh no — I go up, and my older son is still awake. He’s on his phone with his buddy sound asleep on the trundle. I was like, “Why are you awake? I thought you said you had stopped gaming at eleven or something.” He’s like, “No, I did, but then I couldn’t fall asleep. I thought maybe if I did a little TikTok it would help me fall asleep.” I was like, TikTok is not going to help! I have a big range and a cast of characters in my home.
CCJ: What’s your morning routine like?
ZO: It starts early. How detailed do you want? We get up, we take out the dog. We feed the dog. Then soon after, honestly, my little guys get on their iPads every morning. I let them do that for an hour and I get a lot of work done during that time.
I plow through any last-minute emails. I try to post, maybe, if I can. If I have a morning interview, I’ll be reading. I read until midnight last night for this interview I have today, which I try to do over the weekends. This morning was so chaotic. I didn’t have time to do any work this morning.
CCJ: And how do you manage your social media? You’re on Instagram, Facebook, Good Reads, Twitter, Medium — all the channels. How do you deal with all of them?
ZO: I have my Instagram linked to my Facebook now. That took me a couple of hours. I’m very technology literate. I do my own website, a lot of it. I can do my own podcast. I know how to do everything. That’s why when I work with people and they’re like, this is going to take me this many hours, I’m like, no, I know exactly how long it takes to do this. Don’t even try it.
Sometimes I do Twitter. It’s more reactive on Twitter. I basically retweet things. I almost never tweet unless I think of it and someone says, will you tweet about this? I’m like, okay, sure. Nina from my team does my Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books accounts. I was also doing Moms Don’t Have Time to Lose Weight until I decided to stop trying to lose weight, which I have to start this morning. That ebbs and flows depending on my own motivation. Sorry to those thousand people [laughs].
If I think of it, I post maybe once a week in that account. I’m not very active on it anymore, but I should be. Posting on Instagram is also my writing — I view that as writing. I do it every day, a little something, even a paragraph. Sometimes that’s all I can do. At some point during the day, I do that, or twice a day. I try but I’m bad at scrolling for at least fifteen minutes to see who else posted something. I have an alert that pops up when I’ve done an hour of Instagram a day.
CCJ: I do too. I have the same thing. My alert is shorter but it helps.
ZO: That’s it. When I’m doing things, though, that’s what I’m doing. If I’m doing an interview with you —
CCJ: You’re zoned in.
ZO: Yes. When I do a podcast, that’s what I’m doing. When I read, that’s what I’m doing. I have a lot of time during the day when I’m with my kids, and that’s what I’m doing. Although, often, I’ll be on my phone, but I’m not sitting down answering emails, usually. I definitely use technology for the times that they are busy. Maybe I’m a terrible mother. I probably am.
CCJ: You’re not. Stop it. What apps do you recommend for kids?
ZO: In the mornings, they do iPads. They used to be home. They just started going back to school last week. Remote school is another thing. I would be in [the room with them] and doing my work on the floor. Finally, they’re in school today.
CCJ: Do you work after dinner?
ZO: We eat dinner at six. I eat dinner with the kids, then they watch some TV. That’s when I’ve been doing a lot of my live events. They know to watch TV while I do a live event. Even if I don’t have a live event, I do another solid hour of work from seven to eight, mostly uninterrupted.
CCJ: In your interview with Katie Couric, you mentioned that you read when you’re putting your kids to bed.
ZO: I would treasure five minutes if I knew it would just be five minutes. But sometimes it’s an hour. You just don’t know. You’re a prisoner in this situation, the bedtime chaos. But now they always know I am reading. Then they’ll ask me what I’m reading, and say, can I read? Can you read to me? I read to them. Then they know as they’re falling asleep, I’m always reading. A lot of the reading I do during the day I do on my computer or at my desk here. I’m not reading like I’m lounging. I’m reading with a pen because I’m working. I read some books in bed at night.
CCJ: You have a two-book deal for Princess Charming. How did you find time to write your kids’ books?
ZO: I found it incredibly easy to write because I have written multiple books now, many of them unpublished but I still write. I should probably just stop. I don’t know why I don’t just stop.
CCJ: Don’t stop! Don’t stop. I listen to your podcast every day in the car. And when I get to “What advice do you have for aspiring authors?” I’ll rewind. So often the authors say, keep going, keep going. I’m like, okay, I can keep going.
ZO: Actually, I’m also starting a short-form podcast called “Wake Up and Write.” I’m just taking that last paragraph where I ask the authors just that: “What advice do you have for aspiring writers?” It’ll be a two-minute podcast; you can listen every morning to get inspired and get going.
CCJ: That’s brilliant.
ZO: That starts next Monday. Anyway, I’ve written many books over the last few years. I wrote Forty Love, this memoir about falling in love again at forty.
CCJ: I love the title of that.
ZO: Thank you. I’m not allowed legally to write about my ex-husband, so the story felt —
CCJ: Stilted?
ZO: Yeah, which I understood. It just didn’t work that way. Then I decided, okay, forget it. I’ll write it as fiction. Then I wrote it as fiction.
CCJ: You drafted the whole thing?
ZO: I have it somewhere. I showed it to a few friends. I never submitted it for publication. Then I wrote a novella. I spent a flight from Athens to New York writing eleven hours straight. I wrote a fifty-thousand-word novella or something.
Over time, I rewrote it as literary fiction, poetic almost. I tried it that way. I can write in all these styles. Clearly, they’re not all working. Then I’ve written all these book proposals. I’ve written like a hundred book proposals!
CCJ: I think book proposals are fun, though.
ZO: It’s fun figuring out structure and stuff. Compared to writing all those, a children’s book was easy. Literally, my editor was like, “Here’s how you do it.” She’s a friend of an author. She had a meeting with me and showed me this picture. She said, “This is a character named Princess Charming. What would her story be? How would you write her picture book? What would it be? Do you want to try this?” I was like, “Sure, I’ll give it a shot.” Then two minutes later, I was like, “Okay, here’s how I would do it.” She was like, “Great.”
CCJ: And that was it?
ZO: Yeah, I figured it out. Then she showed me on a piece of paper, “Here’s how you do a children’s book. Here’s how many pages it should be, how many words.”
It took like an hour. I wrote it. She said, “No, this is for older kids.” Okay. Then I wrote it again. That was maybe an hour or two. Then she’s like, “Let’s tweak it. Why don’t you come into the office?” I went into Penguin Random House and we started working on it together.
We redid the first couple of pages. She’s like, “I think you’re well on your way.” I was like, “Why don’t we just finish it? That took five minutes! Let’s just do it. We’ll be done in twenty minutes.” We sat there and we just finished the editing. Then it was done.
I have worked so hard for these anthologies, hours and hours of time. I’ve written my own essays. I’ve helped with the editing, the marketing. I’m giving the money away that I make. Then these children’s books, which took three hours, I actually made a lot of money on.
CCJ: The anthology must have been a lot of work. How did you coordinate that?
ZO: It was an online publication first. Yes, that took a lot of work. Putting it in the anthology form was just copying and pasting it. I am doing the second one from scratch as an anthology. That comes out November 2nd. That was a different type of work because that involved commissioning essays.
It’s all done now. Although, I have to write my introduction. I keep forgetting to do that. We’re submitting that April 1st. Even last week, I was dealing with my lawyer, who’s my best friend, with DocuSign contracts. She asked which ones were signed. I’m like, I don’t know where I put all the contracts [laughs]. I’m not very organized.
CCJ: How do you keep your calendar? How do you manage the kids’ calendar? Do you have a family calendar in iCal?
ZO: I have iCal. The kids have their own calendar in a different color.
Then I have my calendar, which is basically all work. I can’t remember the last time I put something that wasn’t a meeting or whatever. I have this new calendar which is a press calendar because I’ve been doing so much publicity for the book. I used to have a calendar which was KZ Time, which was my husband and me. Now I don’t even have that calendar! I haven’t added in that calendar in like a year.
CCJ: Do your kids have a calendar on their phone, the older ones?
ZO: Yeah. In fact, this morning my daughter said “I never know when you’re doing podcasts. Why don’t you add me to your calendar?” I was like, oh, that’s a great idea because I have a podcast calendar. That’s another thing. I have a podcast recording calendar and a Zibby life/meeting calendar. I just added her to the podcast calendar.
CCJ: Do you ever shut off?
ZO: So much of what I do is relaxing and fun. Last night I was reading this book, The Idea of You by Robinne Lee. I’m interviewing the author today.
I don’t want to say it’s like porn, but there are some steamy sex scenes in here. I was thinking to myself, I can’t believe this is work! She gets together with this boy-band guy. It’s really good, actually. Reading, for me, is how I shut off.
We watched the Grammys last night, but I was at my desk doing another book proposal. When I’m with my kids, I’m shut off. I taught all the kids tennis yesterday. I played tag for thirty minutes all through the house.
What does it mean to shut off?
CCJ: To have no or low tech sometimes, like on a Sunday, no phone.
ZO: I almost never know where my phone is. This weekend, I was on the tennis court for probably two hours with all sorts of different kids. I didn’t look at my phone once. On the weekends, I try. During the week, it’s much harder.
CCJ: Understanding how one person juggles a dynamic schedule can be so helpful to others. How do you stave off feelings of being overwhelmed?
ZO: Whenever I start feeling overwhelmed, which is often, I handwrite my to-do list down next to me. I just start cranking through that. When my emails get too overwhelming, I start processing some of them because they’re actually things I need to do as opposed to just correspondences. I’m also crazy about email management.
CCJ: Do you delete all the junk mail?
ZO: I delete all the junk mail, yes. I try to never let my inbox have more than a hundred unread messages. If I go over that it’s just because I’ve been on a Zoom for an hour or something. I try, but it’s very hard, to make sure that there’s no scrollbar by the time I go to bed.
I have a thousand folders on the left side. I just started a folder called Pitches to Consider. It was all pitches for books. I have Moms Don’t Have Time to Travel, Moms Don’t Have Time to Grieve, Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, expenses, kids, camp. Everything goes into a folder. I also don’t wait to do things. As soon as it comes in, I do it. I actually just had to install Mail Butler on my mail because people were saying to stop emailing everybody on the weekends. I’m like, that’s when I get everything done! Now they go out Monday morning.
I just got an assistant about two months ago, who’s amazing. I was really reluctant to give up my own scheduling, but it was taking so long to schedule all my podcasts and stuff. By working with her, I’ve been able to articulate what I need. I used to be like, I want to pick up my kids, so don’t schedule before or after that. Now I’m like, well, do I need to pick up my kids every day, or is it better if the babysitter they love picks them up and I finish something else and then I’m free when they get home? I’ve been trying to not schedule stuff after two. That’s my new thing, or have a long break if there’s a night event.
CCJ: This is shifting gears a little bit, but I think that it’s important for people who have been gravely affected by Covid. I remember watching your interview with Katie Couric, where you spoke of losing your mother-in-law, and feeling the chills.
How did you get through that time and manage to keep up with work? It wasn’t like you said, “Sorry, people, I’m going through a difficult time, talk to you in a month.” You kept going, and your sharing helped a lot of people.
What is your advice for people going through that kind of crisis? And how did you keep your energy up?
ZO: My energy is always up. I have a lot of energy. Energy’s not my problem. It’s more like, how did I keep from crying?
CCJ: Yes. How did you manage your emotions?
ZO: I have found that sharing on Instagram is the most therapeutic thing that’s ever happened to me. I used to always write. I’ve always written my emotions. Back in the day, I would write in my diary. Then I used to write it in a Word document or something and just keep an online diary here, not to show anybody ever.
Then occasionally, I would take some of those feelings and make them into an essay. I would submit for publication, but it was so long before online stuff. I sometimes submit now if I package it into an essay. But there’s this happy medium where I sort through my feelings instantly, write them, publish them immediately, and instantly get feedback. It was the most helpful thing.
I even got to a point where I was crying about my grandmother who also passed away this summer, who I was super close to. I was crying. I was like, is it too much to actually post myself crying? This feels like too much. Then at the same time, I was like, but this is how I’m feeling. I don’t know. It probably was too much. The more that I share, the more I find that there are so many people feeling the same things.
CCJ: They’re going through the same things. They’re feeling so alone.
ZO: Right. In fact, the book proposal I wrote last night is called Been There. I feel all these same things, not that this is so earth-shattering. Anyway, to know instantly while I’m on the bathroom floor that forty other women are maybe not on their bathroom floors right then but have just gotten off the bathroom floor, it’s just amazing.
The collective prayers and kind thoughts for my mother-in-law while she was going through the illness, I believe it was helping. She knew. She was reading all that. I would be like, “Susan, go to Instagram. Look. Look how many people are commenting.” She loved it. It meant something. It was very much this collective. It’s been this gift. This sounds hokey, but it used to be that you would be friends with people you knew. I would be friends with people in my class. I can get along with almost anybody, but they weren’t my people. Do you know what I mean?
CCJ: Yeah. You weren’t relating to them on a deeper level.
ZO: Right. Even if I were to share with them as openly as I do with strangers, I don’t think we would have the same thing. We’re just different. It’s fine. There are all types of people. Some of the moms in my older kid’s preschool have become some of my best friends. In my younger kid’s preschool, I didn’t really hit it off with any of those moms.
Now my world is — there are so many people just like me. I’m not just weird. This is probably just from my anxiety disorder [laughs]. This is a constellation of symptoms. The combination of personality traits makes me a unique individual, but there are so many people now who I’ve met who are so similar to me, or dealing with similar things.
It’s like meeting these kindred spirits all over. It’s the greatest. Talk about not feeling alone. Everything I’m doing fuels me on so many levels just from who I am as a human being.
Then getting to have conversations — a conversation where we would actually talk or I would interview you, that energizes me again. Plus, every time I’m in these conversations, I’m having all these new ideas because I’m just in this sort of productive state.
CCJ: What’s next? Is there an Oscars of Books on the horizon?
ZO: There is! It’s called The Zibby Awards. I haven’t told a soul. I literally just emailed my team.
That’s what I did all Saturday afternoon, setting up my Stripe account. It’s called The Zibby Awards, which is celebrating the overlooked parts of books. I have best spine design, best dedication, best publicist, best author newsletter, best social media for an author. I have this really funny logo. I asked my designer to use a little tiara and mascara. I’m going to do that. Then I’m going to have a big in-person awards ceremony.
Caroline: It’s so cool because nobody talks about the behind-the-scenes of the books.
Zibby: Here are all the categories: best acknowledgments, best opening sentence, best character, best sophomore novel, best book tour, best elevator pitch. Then you go in and you enter here. You can choose from all these different things. I’m excited about that. I just started that today.
CCJ: Anything else? My guess is you’ve got a lot in store.
ZO: I’m also starting Moms Don’t Have Time to Travel, which I’m super excited about. That’s going to have a bunch of different travel essays, which will be on Moms Don’t Have Time to Write. I’m going to get that as a branded thing.
I’d like to do retreats at different hotels, where the weekends are themed: “Moms Don’t Have Time to Work Out,” with exercise classes. And for “Moms Don’t Have Time to Write,” there will be writing time. “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read,” there’ll be an author event. “Moms Don’t Have Time to Eat,” “Moms Don’t Have Time to Sleep,” etc. I want to brand the whole thing.
I have this whole vision. Then I also want to partner with other hotels so even when it’s not a retreat, you know you’re buying the “Moms Don’t Have Time To” travel experience. You’ll get a tote bag. You’ll get something when you check in. You might choose that hotel because they have that experience. This is down the line. I want to have a crowdsourced feature about travel from this community. For instance, if I go to a particular hotel, I know to request room 1482 — or whatever the best room to get is.
There will also be restaurant reviews, like a Yelp for moms type of thing. I kind of want to do that. I’m starting the “Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Sex” podcast because I just interviewed this amazing, hilarious, British reality star and sex expert. We’re going to source questions anonymously. She’s going to answer around three questions per show for half an hour a week.
I also want to start a community, “Moms Don’t Have Time to Grieve.” I have a woman who’s doing that with me whose brother was murdered. She has two little kids. It’s awful. I’m not sure what form that’s taking yet, but it’s another community from the big community. I’m trying to figure out how to get people into the different areas they need.
CCJ: And what about a publishing imprint?
ZO: That’s why I did the fellowship. I was going to start a publishing imprint. I had the logo. It was going to be under Skyhorse who did my anthologies. Basically, it’s like self-publishing except they distribute. It was called Zibby Time Press. I had a press release ready to go. I had four authors and two editors and everything. Then the deal fell through at the last minute for various reasons.
I talked to [another publishing house] about doing ten books a year together. Then I realized that would be a full-time job in and of itself, and that I couldn’t help that many people that way. I’m trying to help a lot of people.
Yesterday, a writer by the name of Alisha Fernandez Miranda wrote for my Moms Don’t Have Time to Write publication. She wrote in the bio that she’s working on a memoir. She described the memoir. I thought, if I had a publishing imprint, I would publish that memoir. That sounds amazing to me.
It was the story of a forty-year-old intern, and how she went back and tried to intern at all these places after having a successful professional career. She has this super unique background and is living in some random country. Her essay was hilarious. It was about being a fitness intern for this 80s-style workout class. She’s great. She’s going to write a fabulous memoir. I connected her to an agent, Lisa Leshne, yesterday, who I know is going to be a perfect match because of her personality.
I only have so much time. [Regarding the imprint] I thought, I can’t do this. Then I had all these authors on the hook. I didn’t want to disappoint them. And one of the editors said, why don’t you make it a fellowship? Which was brilliant. It doesn’t mean I won’t do my own imprint at some point, but it would have to be under a bigger publishing company. I would have to not really be involved that much.
CCJ: Also, you have your online magazine. Medium is so great.
ZO: I know. I love it. I’m all about instant gratification. That’s why I like doing my website. I do it, and it’s up.
CCJ: Anything else on the horizon?
ZO: The only thing I haven’t done that I would like to have at some point is a show where I meet and talk with authors —
CCJ: Thus, “Oprah of Books.”
ZO: Yeah, like an Oprah-type show. I’m already doing the interviews. I was watching Oprah with Meghan Markle. I thought, I could do that!
Caroline Callahan Janson is a freelance writer who lives in Miami, Florida. She has written for GQ, Departures, the Palm Beach Daily News, and is currently at work on a middle-grade novel.
